


Better to Ask Forgiveness

by CatKing_Catkin



Category: Leverage
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Aftermath of a Case, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Character Study, Control Issues, Developing Relationship, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Falling In Love, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, Getting to Know Each Other, Hopeful Ending, Hospitals, Implied/Referenced Torture, Introspection, M/M, Medical Procedures, Moral Ambiguity, Non-Graphic Violence, Non-Sexual Submission, Talking, Team Dynamics, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-27
Updated: 2014-12-27
Packaged: 2018-03-03 18:49:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2864096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatKing_Catkin/pseuds/CatKing_Catkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takes place some time during Season 4. Even the Leverage Team can't prepare for everything. One bad moment leads to Hardison and Parker captured and tortured, with only Eliot in a position to rescue them. This he does, but what he does to their captors to make certain they can't follow leaves Nate uncertain if the hitter can even have a place on the team anymore. They're supposed to be the good guys, now, and there are some lines that the good guys just aren't supposed to cross. In the meantime, he tries to keep Eliot at bay, tries to keep his mind clear enough to think of the best way to go.</p><p>But Parker keeps asking to see him, and in the end, Nate gets tired of excuses. He goes to visit Eliot at his home, and a conversation happens that solves a few issues and drags so many more into the light.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Better to Ask Forgiveness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [prettysophist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettysophist/gifts).



> In particular, this was written for the prompt "Although Nate, Sophie, Parker, Eliot and Hardison have learned to work fairly smoothly together, every single one of them has a very different background and a very different sense of morality. Show me a time when this caused serious issues between two or three or all five of them." I hope I fulfilled it well and I hope you enjoy! Happy Exchange!

Even after all the years they'd worked together, years that had included pulling up sticks and fleeing to entirely different states, Nate had still never seen Eliot's chosen apartment. Reasons had always come up for him to see Hardison's, Parker's, even Sophie's. Yet somehow or another, he and Eliot had never had a reason to meet at his place. There had always been somewhere better. There had always been an excuse.

Recent events had left Nate very tired of excuses. So here he was, for a conversation that was long overdue, maybe even as far back as the first weeks of the team coming together.

It wasn't that he didn't know what Eliot could be capable of. Or at least, Nate thought that he'd known what Eliot was capable of. He'd even made use of the man's almost virtuoso-like gift for violence in the past. Though it left a bad taste in his mouth whenever he had to, sometimes a situation just had to be brought to an abrupt halt, and there was no better man for that than Eliot. But before now, it had only ever happened at his word. Eliot was...there was no good way to say it, even in the privacy of his own head. Eliot was the gun. Nate was the man who could pull the trigger. He’d only ever had to do it once, really, in those last, desperate moments in the warehouse with Damien Moroe’s men on their heels.  

When guns went off on their own, it was always, to say the least, a nasty shock. Especially when it resulted in three mutilated bodies being found by the police. It had all happened in the aftermath of a job that had left Hardison and Parker in the hospital, and Nate had been very wrapped up in trying to manage damage control on that front. He’d assumed that Eliot would stand by. He’d assumed that Eliot would focus on keeping Hardison and Parker safe. He’d assumed that he would only have to worry about threats from without, rather than fracturing from within.

He’d been wrong on all counts.

Nathan Ford did not take well to being wrong. Normally, he could adapt. Normally, thinking on the fly was one of his greatest talents. It was one of the reasons why he was the team’s leader. He certainly didn’t like these brutal reminders that even he couldn’t plan for every eventuality, not even to keep his team together and safe.

“You don’t know that it’s him,” Sophie murmured to him, as they sat together in the hospital waiting room, watching the news report of the bodies being found. The details were read off a report in a dry, level, professional tone that belied the gruesome horror, but they listened anyway. If there was even the faintest chance that some sort of evidence had been found at the scene that could link back to Eliot, and through him to them, then they had to know as soon as possible. “They made a lot of enemies. We were just the ones who got there first.”

“Yeah, we were,” Nate sighed, steepling his fingers in front of his face. “And yeah, Sophie. I do.”

Sophie sighed, bowing her head. Her hair, tangled and unwashed from days of stress and vigils, fell over her face. “I suppose you do. But, Nate...you know why he would have done this.”

Nate knew what the answer should be. He also knew that even Sophie didn’t sound entirely certain of what she was saying. Eliot had always been the one they relied on to do what had to be done, but this was...further. Maybe too far. Maybe uncontrollably too far. They would have to decide that amongst themselves, except he was the leader and two of his team were in medically induced comas and so the final call would very likely come down to him. He knew they would defer to his expertise, whatever he said. That didn’t make the prospect remotely easier.

“I’m not sure I do,” is what he said out loud to Sophie. “I think we need to have a talk.”

“Yes. I suppose that’s only fair.”

The actual talk, and the visit to Eliot’s apartment, came three days later. It wasn’t as though Nate didn’t have plenty to keep him busy in the aftermath of the catastrophe. It should have been a straightforward sort of job. The owner of a family bakery had gotten deep into trouble with the mob, over money loaned him to keep his store from being run out of town by a chain moving in from down south. The owner had fallen behind on his payments, with a little help from the mob driving away any potential customers. The mob had gotten rough trying to repossess the store as collateral. The owner had come to Leverage Consulting for help - it was a story that had happened damn near dozens of times before for them. 

The smallest of things could set off a catastrophe. Even Hardison couldn’t see every attack coming, especially when he was out in the field and out from behind the comparative safety of his monitors. Even Parker couldn’t be alert at all times. They’d been caught, they’d been kept, and suddenly Nate’s quick thinking wasn’t just a matter of seeing the job through to a successful completion. It was a matter of keeping two people who depended on him from painful, violent death.

The mobsters in question had sent pictures. Nate thought bitterly that he should have known by the look on Eliot’s face when he laid eyes on them how this was going to go. His hitter had handled hostage negotiations like a pro, with the same easy finesse that he handled all unsavory elements that might crop up on a job. He’d gone to handle the hostage exchange alone. He’d been very insistent about that - “I’m not risking you guys, too.”

Nate and Sophie, foolishly, had believed him. It wasn't as though they’d hadn't had their own affairs to wrap up, to try and salvage what they could of the job. Their client didn't deserve to suffer for their mistakes. 

The next thing they knew, they were getting a call from the hospital that Hardison and Parker had been admitted and were about to go into surgery. They’d gotten a call from Eliot telling them to keep their heads down for the forseeable future. This they had been doing, in a hospital waiting room, where no one wanted to hang around too long anyway.

Eliot had stopped by two days ago. Nate had asked Sophie to go see him, and hadn’t even had to ask her to tell him to leave. She had a way with difficult words. Nate knew that if he’d tried to see his teammate with things as they were now, there was no way it wouldn’t have ended in shouting.

Nate didn’t want to say anything he would regret more than this happening in the first place.

Eliot had come by the next day. Sophie had told him the same thing. Eliot had stopped by today, and the only reason Nate hadn’t known that very moment was because he’d been in the hospital room shared by Parker and Hardison, because Parker had been the first to wake up from her coma. Nate had tried to explain all she’d missed to her the best that he could, yet there was one question that had left him utterly at a loss for words.

“Where’s Eliot? Is he okay?”

It was then that Nate had grown tired of excuses, most especially his own.

So here he was, late that same evening. He knocked on the door of the hitter’s apartment, realizing only belatedly that he had no way of knowing if the other man would even be in. He hadn’t called ahead, that just hadn’t seemed appropriate under the circumstances. And he was just thinking through how best to jury rig some of Hardison’s equipment to at least track his teammate’s comm unit when the entire scheme had been rendered moot by Eliot opening the door.

For a moment, his teammate’s face registered only genuine, almost vulnerable surprise. Then it hardened once more into a blank mask, one Nate was all too familiar with by now. “Hardison and Parker okay?” he asked. His tone was flat, but the words still did their damage to Nate’s resolve.

“They’re fine,” he said. He almost added _Parker was asking for you_. He was almost that weak.

“That’s good.” Eliot nodded, just once, but Nate didn’t miss the way his jaw tightened. “I thought they would be, but it’s nice to be sure. Would have been nice to know sooner.”

“There are some things we need to discuss first.”

Eliot stared at him for a second longer, but Nate didn’t continue. He didn’t want to have this conversation here, out in the hall, and after a second Eliot seemed to decide the same. He opened the door fully instead and stepped aside for Nate. He made no other move until Nate had moved into the apartment proper, and then all he did was close and lock the door. Nate was dully surprised to realize that Eliot’s door didn’t even have a chain. His teammate periodically returned to an apartment that was so unsecure that it didn’t even have a chain. Somehow, that thought struck Nate as almost personally _offensive_ , but he shoved it aside in favor of the matter at hand. Unpleasant as the matter at hand was to contemplate, the fact that he could force himself to do so anyway was yet another reason why he was the leader.

“Welcome,” Eliot added, apparently as an afterthought as he turned back to face Nate. He spread his arms wide with a wry smile, encompassing a one-room apartment on the third-floor of a nondescript tenement fifteen blocks away from the main office. “Can I get you anything?”

Nate wanted very much to ask for a drink, but bit his tongue. Instead, he bought himself a few seconds by looking around.

It was...nice. It was small, but comfortably and even tastefully furnished. In fact, the word “airy” came to mind, which was otherwise a word that should never even exist in the same paragraph as his hitter. The sofa was overstuffed, one of the armchairs had been left in a reclined position. There were framed landscapes on the wall, in mediums from oil to watercolor. The kitchen was open, with only an island to divide it and the rest of the living room. There were even bar stools lined up at that island. Nate caught a faint whiff on the breeze from the open window, and realized only on looking towards it that there was an honest-to-god window garden situated there, bright green leaves fluttering lazily in the late-evening wind.

If he’d been asked a few hours ago, this was not the sort of apartment he would ever have associated with a man who had mutilated three men to the point of being almost unidentifiable chunks of meat a few days ago. Yet here he was, and here was that man beside him.

Speaking of, Eliot was still staring at him, and Nate knew that every wandering glance would have been noted and filed away. So he didn’t bother to hide them - instead, he looked back at his teammate and smiled apologetically. “No thanks.”

“Suit yourself.” Eliot moved off into the kitchen anyway. Nate recognized a bustle when he saw it. He still waited until Eliot waved him towards the sitting area before moving to sit, taking a seat on one end of the sofa. And he waited until Eliot returned, a mug of steeping tea cradled carefully in his hands. This he set down on the coffee table before taking a seat in the non-reclined armchair, which just happened to be across from Nate. Nate couldn’t tell if this little ritual was deliberately meant to make him wait, as he had been making Eliot wait these past few days, or if it was actually to settle his hitter’s nerves. He wasn’t sure which possibility bothered him more.

There was a lot he’d grown unsure of over these past few days. It wasn’t a good feeling, and he sent a silent prayer of thanks for having Sophie so nearby all throughout to give his hand a good, sound slap whenever he reached for a bottle. She’d been a steady source of support, when he hadn’t been able to provide it for himself.

“So,” said Eliot at long last, staring unblinking at his leader. “What’s on your mind?”

Faced with the prospect of laying out all his tangled thoughts at long last, Nate suddenly wished he’d accepted the offer of a drunk.

“What you did to those men,” he said. “That’s not what we do.”

“That’s not what you do,” Eliot corrected him without missing a beat. “If it was, you wouldn’t need me around.”

“I sent you to rescue Hardison and Parker.”

“I did.”

“You didn’t have to brutalize them.”

“I kinda think I did, Nate. They had bosses, they had grudges, they’d already gotten ahold of my teammates, your team, once. And it’s always easier to do something again when you’ve already done it once.” A muscle in Eliot’s jaw twitched. His fingers flexed where his hands rested in his lap. Nate wondered, wildly, just what he was imagining or remembering with that seemingly innocuous motion. “The cops weren’t going to hold them back. Their bosses weren’t going to be scared of us. They sent a message to that effect loud and clear. I just sent one right back.” He tilted his head to regard Nate, in a gesture that looked almost animal and put Nate in mind of nothing so much as a wary dog. “Is that why you’ve got your back up? What I did...it bothers you? That’s why you’re not letting me see them?”

That was the reason, and nowhere close to the reason. Nate let out a long, tired sigh that somehow failed to take his doubts with them. As much for an excuse to look away as to deal with the headache he could feel building behind his eyes, Nate bowed his head to massage his temples.

“You say that like it’s the craziest thing you’ve ever heard.”

“Because it is!” Eliot burst out, and it was the most emotion Nate had ever heard out of him in days. There was a flash of...something in his hitter’s eyes, when he looked up. Something restrained, but still dangerous for it. “I brought them home! I got them help! You said yourself that they’re going to make it, so why are you coming at me like I’m the problem?”

“Because you are!” Oh, Nate had come here intending not to shout, but all of that had suddenly gone right out the window. It was with a supreme effort of what will he could muster that he stayed sitting at all. “Because that sort of thing isn’t what we do! We’re supposed to be better, we’re supposed to be the good guys, and that goes for all of us.”

“Yeah, you just keep on telling yourself that.”

Nate drew back as sharply as if he’d been slapped. He could almost hear the brakes on his mind squealing in protest. He could faintly taste bile rising as he slowly comprehended just what Eliot had said - and, worse still, what he was implying.

Somehow, worst of all was the look on Eliot’s face - the smile, like a self-satisfied cat who’d just brought his paws down on a hapless canary, and was looking forward to a bit of playtime before lunch.

Nate knew that look very well. He’d just never seen it turned his way before, not in all these years. For some of the unfortunate souls who had gotten in their way over the years, particularly the heavy muscle who were all too happy to dole out violence for the right paycheck, that look had been one of the last things they’d seen before the lights went out.

Yet even as Eliot rose from his seat and took a step nearer to Nate, fluid as the predator it was still so easy to forget he was at heart, Nate forced himself not to twitch, not to blink. Even now, maybe even especially now, he couldn’t believe that Eliot would ever hurt him. He could, of course, in so many ways that would probably make Nate sick to even think about too long. But he wouldn’t. More to the point, this little show of bristling bloodlust might just be proving that. To people he really intended to hurt, Eliot didn’t waste that kind of time. He was defensive, he was trying to put Nate on the defensive, and Nate realized that he couldn’t let that continue. So he stayed outwardly calm and composed, even as Eliot took another step nearer, then another. Even as his hitter stood looming over him, Nate asked in a tone devoid of any emotion at all: “What are you talking about?”

He needed to get Eliot talking, really talking. And then he needed to listen. Nate had done a lot of digging into the story over the last few days, from every angle he could find. Except Eliot’s, he realized in that moment. Unpleasant as this was, that couldn’t go on. Unpleasant as this was, he had a responsibility to his team, and he hadn’t yet decided that Eliot was no longer a member of his team.

Maybe he had before, but not now, not now that he could see how...wounded Eliot looked beneath the bloody mask.

And, sure enough, the other man let out a long sigh that he probably meant to sound exasperated but mostly sounded tired. He hung his head so his bangs fell into his eyes, but from this angle, Nate could still see something there. What mattered most, however, was that Eliot replied at long last.

“I know why you have to talk like that.” He smiled bitterly. “I know why you have to disapprove of me, and what I do. What I can do. Because you’re a good, honest man, and it’s important to me...to us,” he corrected himself quickly, though not quite quickly enough. “...that you stay that way. If you weren’t, then none of this would work. Because you’re a good guy, we can be the good guys, and we...we need that. If we weren’t, I think we all would have burned out a long time ago.”

He leaned in, and Nate couldn’t help but lean back. Eliot braced a hand on the arm of the couch beside Nate, the other on the back of the couch beside his head. It took Nate several seconds through the rush of adrenaline to realize that Eliot was suddenly breathing just as heavily as he was, that there was a minute tremor in his shoulders that he so rarely saw even after the most brutal battles.

“But here’s the thing,” Eliot murmured, his tone strangely _intimate_. That was really the only word for it, a low murmur across the not-nearly-sufficient distance between them, words just for Nate’s ears only. Especially since Nate had been to seminary school, and knew a confession when it was being spilled out before him. “This isn’t the kind of world where good guys make it. Not yet. Maybe one day it will be, but it’s not yet, and that’s why you need me. You’re an honest man, but you’re also a smart man. Sometimes, you need me to get my hands dirty in a way none of the others can. That none of the others should. And you give me the nod and you look the other way, because good men don’t watch. You just know that I’ll do my job, and you don’t have to know anything more. Whatever helps you sleep at night. You don't sleep enough as it is.”

“You _mutilated_ them,” Nate replied. He was trying to mentally dig in his heels in the face of all of this, which had taken a turn in a direction he wasn’t sure he liked but, worse still, wasn’t sure he didn’t. He was trying to stick to the heart of the matter, but wasn’t sure he knew what that was anymore. “The police found them. The police are trying to find whoever did that to them.”

“Nate, Nate, Nate…” Eliot’s tone was gently chiding, even as his smile was a little too wide and much too sharp. “I’m a professional. The cops will never know what happened.”

“If that’s supposed to make me feel any better about this…”

“It’s not supposed to make you feel anything. It’s just a fact. You want to know another fact? I _liked_ it. I liked making them pay.”

Moving like a man in a dream, Eliot slid slowly to his knees before Nate, so that their gazes were almost on a level. Almost, but not quite, and those last couple of inches suddenly made all the difference in the world. His hands moved to rest on either side of Nate’s knees instead. Like this, he looked like a supplicant before a king, or a man in desperate need of a confessional.

“When you need a problem solved, you point me at it and you pull the trigger. You think that’s anything new for me? You think that’s something I haven’t done without a blink all my life?” Eliot smiled, or Nate thought it might be a smile. “The difference is, you’re the only one in all that time who’s been doing it for a cause I can believe in. Not something I’m told to believe in, not something high in the sky like this nation or that, for justice or freedom or democracy. No, we fight for the little guys who have got nowhere else to turn. We make their lives better here, now, today. That’s something I can get behind. That’s something I’ll fight for…body and soul.”

“Except you didn’t wait for me to pull the trigger,” Nate replied in a hushed voice, in a voice that didn’t eve entirely sound like his own. He felt strangely detached, from all of this, like he was floating above and watching it unfold. “I didn’t tell you to do this.” He almost added _I didn’t want you to do this_ , but no. They both knew at this point that that would have been a lie. “How can I be sure that the next time you go off the rails, it won’t end worse for us? That Hardison and Parker won’t get caught in the crossfire?”

“Is that what you’re worried about?” Eliot smiled in something that it took several seconds for Nate to recognize as relief, undeniably so. “Nate, I would walk through fire to keep you safe. All of you safe. And if you think that means I wouldn’t put a bullet to my head if you gave the word…” He mimed the gesture with an easy casualness reserved for shaking hands, and Nate couldn’t ignore the way his heart lurched. “…you don’t know me at all. But if that means I have to shove them in a pool with their hands tied behind their backs for a little while...that's what I'll do, too. I don't care if you hate me. I care if you're safe.”

 _I’m not sure I do know you_ , Nate thought to himself. Yet looking at Eliot here and now, as his teammate knelt before him, even he couldn’t doubt that Eliot obviously meant every word he was letting pour out of him like blood from a torn-open wound. Either way, he didn’t speak up to interrupt.

“But if that means disobeying, or acting on my own, then I’ll do it. Whatever it takes for you. For all of you. Better to ask forgiveness than permission, right?”

Nate’s mouth was suddenly very dry. His heart was thudding against his ribs hard enough to be almost painful. “Are you asking my forgiveness?”

“If asking’s all it takes, then I’m asking.”

Eliot suddenly seemed much too close. Eliot suddenly didn’t seem close enough at all. Nate knew that he needed to leave. Now.

He’d known coming here wouldn’t be easy. He’d come anyway. He hadn’t expected so many other issues, both moral and traitorously _emotional_ , to get dumped into his lap. He’d been afraid at the start merely of realizing that his teammate would cross too many line for the sake of the team. He hadn’t thought he would have to contemplate just what it meant for him, for all of them, that his teammate saw it almost as his moral obligation to sublimate his own humanity for the sake of the team.

He'd known from the start that Eliot was the gun. Nate was the man who pulled the trigger. What he hadn't fully understood was just what it meant that Eliot saw it that way, too. 

Nate was certainly in no position to contemplate how he felt about that.

Where did the line get drawn, under those circumstances?

He _really_ wished he'd accepted that drink. 

“Asking is all it takes,” was what Nate said out loud instead, shifting back ever so slightly to put some nevertheless much needed distance between them. Eliot understood – he was undeniably good at reading people for ways above and beyond violence, after all. He backed off without another word, subtly enough to make it look like a natural motion but definite enough that Nate let out a breath he hadn’t known until then that he’d been holding. “I’m not sure I can give it right now, though. Come to the hospital tomorrow, and…we’ll see.”

“I get it. See what the others think.”

It was like flipping a switch. That same flat, devoid tone of voice that had first marked Eliot when he first opened the door was back. It was the only answer he could really give, under the circumstances, and it so clearly hurt to give it anyway. The blankness in his voice betrayed that much clearly. Nate felt something twist painfully in his chest, but held resolute. When he made to get to his feet, Eliot did the same, and stepped back to leave him a clear path to the door. His lack of hesitation in doing so was heartbreaking. It would have been so easy in that moment to offer the forgiveness Eliot was asking for. It was forgiveness that he so clearly wanted, his outwardly flippant and collected affect aside. But part of being the leader of this team was that Nate couldn’t just think with his heart, for better or worse.

“Thanks for stopping by,” Eliot added. “You’ll be in touch?”

“Yeah. Stop by the hospital tomorrow, and…we’ll see.”

*  *  *

Nate wasn’t there when Eliot stopped by the hospital the next day. He waited around for a little while, wondering if he’d arrived too early or maybe too late. After all, they’d never settled on a specific time.

Yet as minutes ticked by into over an hour, Eliot started to wonder. He started to doubt, and there were a few bad moments where he considered walking out the door and just never stopping.

He might have done just that, if a new receptionist hadn’t come on duty in the meantime. She just so happened to be the same receptionist that had been on duty at this time for the past few days, the one who had always, politely and regretfully, delivered the news to Eliot that Nate and Sophie had forbade Parker and Hardison from having any other visitors.

Today, glory be, she asked if he wanted to see them. She said that Hardison had woken up at last the night before.

Keeipng pace with her while she showed him to their rooms was harder than any of the fights of the last few days had been.

Nate wasn’t there in the room, either, but Sophie was, and Parker, and Hardison. Sophie was hovering over Hardison’s bed, and Parker was looking towards him, except her gaze snapped round almost the second Eliot stepped over the threshold and her smile was as broad and bright as the sun.

“About time,” she croaked. IT was just barely audible over the beeps and hums of machinery, but it was audible enough. It was audible enough to make Sophie look round and make Hardison look up and they both smiled, too. In Hardison’s eyes, Eliot saw only relief. In Sophie’s eyes, he saw that he was forgiven.

Maybe he would try to change how he did things from here. Maybe this was all the encouragement he needed to keep on exactly as he had. But in this moment, the future didn’t matter very much at all. All that mattered was that he’d helped keep his team safe, and he still had a place under the one leader he had ever been able to believe in all his long, battered life.

“Sorry,” was all he said out loud, with a smile and a half shrug, as he stepped inside to pull up a chair. “Couldn’t decide on what kind of flowers to bring.”

 

 


End file.
